ingredient

American  

[in-gree-dee-uhnt] / ɪnˈgri di ənt /

noun

• ingredients
  plural

1. 

   something that enters as an element into a mixture.

   Flour, eggs, and sugar are the main ingredients in the cake.

2. a constituent element of anything; component.

   the ingredients of political success.

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ingredient British  

/ ɪnˈɡriːdɪənt /

noun

1. a component of a mixture, compound, etc, esp in cooking

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Synonym Usage

See element.

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• ingredients
  plural

Etymology

Origin of ingredient

First recorded in 1425–75; late Middle English from Latin ingredient- (stem of ingrediēns ), present participle of ingredī “to go or step into, commence,” equivalent to in- in- ² + -gredient- “going”; see gradient

Explanation

An ingredient is one part of a mixture. For example, if you're making chocolate chip cookies, flour is just one ingredient you'll need. Ingredient comes from the Latin word ingredientem, meaning "that which enters into." It's not just for cookies. If you're in the lab mixing a chemical compound, you carefully add one ingredient after the next and record the results (and hope nothing blows up). It's also an element or factor of something, such as how that song you wrote has all the ingredients to be a sure-fire hit! Remember that it ends in -ent, since often what you Eat has ingrediEnts.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ingredient ingredients

That price is paid primarily by the poorer countries where the main ingredient of fishmeal is harvested and processed.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026

The treatment is an obesity shot that combines the main ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy with cagrilintide, a compound that mimics the appetite-regulating hormone amylin.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026

Kim noted that semaglutide — the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy — is more common in these studies because those drugs have been on the market longer than Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 28, 2026

And then there is Bolivian chef Marsia Taha, who used the festival to introduce diners to an ingredient they might otherwise approach with some hesitation.

From Salon ● Sep. 27, 2026

When she was done grinding the unusual ingredient, she spooned its fine white particles into a miniature sieve and dusted the top of four freshly baked pies with it.

From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall

Many chefs have even created their own versions, replacing the original’s rethermalized ground beef and nacho cheese sauce with fussed-over ingredients like pernil, bulgogi, birria and scratchmade salsas or sauces.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

She also said that Chipotle and Starbucks have different supply chains and different ingredients.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 8, 2026

Backed by Oprah Winfrey, True Food Kitchen says it serves nutrient-dense meals including pasta, salads and chicken dishes with thoughtfully sourced ingredients.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026

At CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, physicists are recreating quark-gluon plasma to investigate the ingredients that filled the young universe.

From Science Daily ● Oct. 6, 2026

“Did you ever read the ingredients on the side of a Finkle box?” she asked me.

From "The Million Dollar Shot" by Dan Gutman

Related Words

• additive
• element
• factor
• piece